


Pauper's Grave

by TehanuFromEarthsea



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, The Rise of Skywalker
Genre: Angst, Courage, F/M, Fixing TROS plot-holes, Other, Protection, Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:15:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22011688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TehanuFromEarthsea/pseuds/TehanuFromEarthsea
Summary: How did Rey's parents die? Why did she end up on Jakku?Some say Palpatine hunted down the fugitive son that fled his inhuman experiments, and Rey was simply ballast that he flung aside. Others swear the story went differently: Rey had loving parents who hid her in obscurity and gave their lives to protect her. Still others say her parents sold her to Unkar Plutt for drinking money. There is nobody left alive to tell the truth.But this is how it happened.
Relationships: Rey's Father/Rey's Mother (Star Wars)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 35





	Pauper's Grave

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this a few days back as "Mr and Mrs Palpatine" but that didn't feel like the right title for a serious story so I've changed it. 
> 
> \- - - - -

She slides into the dark space beside him, laughing. There’s just room for their two bodies under the aircon unit where they’ve been camping, deep in the bowels of the city that never ends. 

“Here!” She presses a bottle into his hand. It’s heavy with promise. He takes a swig before he can stop himself, and it lights him up all the way.

“What about the money?” he gasps.

“I got that too. C’mon, let’s celebrate. Last night in Coruscant. There’s two tickets to the Western Reaches with our names on them.”

“You did it, baby! He’ll never find us there.” He starts to laugh and pulls her close. She smells of other people. There’s a scratch under her eye. He kisses it. “Did you have to...?” He can’t ask. Shouldn’t ask, because even after all these years she misunderstands, thinks he’s going to judge, and her body turns tight and hard. 

“I did what I had to. Those fools.” 

“I know, I know you did, baby. I trust you.” He strokes her, little patting touches of his hands, showing her how he loves her, needs her. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Sometimes I have to do things...” Her voice isn’t quite steady. There is no one else in the galaxy that would ever hear that tremor.

He takes her face between his hands. “You’re a survivor. The smartest, toughest woman I’ve ever met, and I thank the day you chose to peel me off the decking and let me join you.”

She takes a swig of the bottle, sniffs, wipes the back of her hand across her mouth before handing it to him. “Huh. I was just rolling you to steal all those nice clothes. But then I’d never met anyone like you.”

“I bet you hadn’t. An emperor’s son lying in a pile of garbage.”

They lie together in companionable silence, letting the bottle’s warm embrace take them to a new world, the future, which would have clean air and kind people and places to hide. He falls asleep listening to the aircon unit above them. Beyond the thump and swish of the blades is the sound of water, a tiny trickle like diamonds in his ears.

  * \- -



He’d grown up between the bitter splendour of an exiled court and the cold inhumanity of Palpatine’s labs. His only skills were avoiding notice and enduring his father’s experiments. Jakku is easy; it only needs his hands and arms and a strong back. He shovels sewage at the waste treatment plant. It’s not so bad; the heat dries the material to a crust whose faintly organic smell is barely offensive. 

Jakku suits his wife. Wily, quick-thinking, a wheeler dealer, she’s always a step ahead of creditors and hot on the trail of the slightest opportunity. After a few months roaming the northern wastes they move into a funny tubular house made from the blast cone of a star destroyer. He buys cloth from the old women who roam the desert on their happabores and hangs it up to shield them from the westering sun. Flushed with spice, his wife laughs at the idea of curtains and calls it their boudoir. Their harem. 

“Don’t say that.” 

“I’m your harem of one. Is it okay to say that?”

“No.”

“What you and your mother lived in was a sort of harem, I guess,” she says, nodding. “Yuk.” She slides her hands under his shirt. “Your shoulders are so tight.”

“Can you rub them?” The work is breaking him, as it does everyone on Jakku.

She does, and croons something about spice, a deal, some traders due tomorrow. “We’ll get some. That’ll take the edge off. No pain, no pain...Is there any beer left?”

“One bottle.”

“You lousy junker! I’ll see what the polis have. Maybe I can get them to owe me.”

“That reminds me. The spice traders, they’ve got pharma too. You should get another patch.”

She’s chugging down the bottle in neat, quick gulps. “Or we could have a baby.”

It’s a knife in the guts, the way the words go in. A world of pain bursting out from ribs laid bare, the soft places underneath that he can’t protect.

“No! Never!”

“Aw, c’mon...”

“No!”

“You’re my sweetness...” she mumbles, and touches the tip of his nose with her finger. “Don’t I get to have two sweet things?”

“No!”

“Are you afraid you wouldn’t love it?”

“I’m afraid I would. You don’t understand. I used to watch my mother come back from the lab. All Palpatine’s women. So sliced up, marks on them everywhere the bacta couldn’t hide. She’d look at me knowing if I ever showed any sign of what Palpatine wanted, he’d do the same to me and there wasn’t a thing she could do to protect me.”

  * \- -



  
  


The smell brings him back from dreams of his mother, the woman with a thousand cuts implied on her bacta-healed skin. The wind that sifts into their shelter carries the scents of dust and smoke and leather, the musk of unwashed humans and aliens. Nothing like the perfumed halls and medicinal taint of the rooms where he grew up. He breathes it in and knows what is real. This dry planet Jakku. 

Nobody’s coming to cut her, nobody’s coming to examine him; there’s no lurking medical droids, no shadow of a father whose laughter was a noise that never meant anything funny. It was years before he learned that people laughed at anything other than suffering.

He rolls over carefully, and his hand knocks against an empty flagon. The makeshift hut is still dark, which is a blessing, because the headache forming behind his eyes will be a boomer. The grateful span between sobriety and oblivion is so good on the way up. Why does it have to hurt so much on the way down?

His hand searches the hollow spot on the blankets behind him. His wife should be there. Passed out, maybe, but even so he could talk to her. 

But she’s gone. He lies very still, tamping down the beating of his heart. She’ll be okay. She’s a survivor. In any case, it’s not her that Palpatine’s after. 

Outside the shelter there’s a burst of laughter and shouting. Glass smashes and somebody runs past, a light bobbing with them. A minute later his wife is back, flopping down beside him, breathless and triumphant. 

“Hey! Hey! You there?” She’s not sure, in the dark.

He groans in reply, and she fumbles a hand onto his forehead, smacks a quick kiss in the region of his nose. She smells of spice.

“So you are!” She laughs, a low rich chuckle.

“Where were you? I thought we were getting smashed together.”

“I was, but I went out for a leak and I saw those traders had come in from the north. They were partying.”

“You shoulda asked me...”

“Aw, you were settled, man. No moving you. Anyway, you know those boxes of batteries we been trying to sell?”

He sits up unwisely fast and clutches his head. “Ow. Ow ow ow. You didn’t sell them, did you? They’ve been flat since the Battle of Endor.”

“Ha no, that trick the Gamorean taught me worked. I got enough of them charged to make it look like the whole box was good. The way you gave them all nice new labels helped.”

“They’d never fall for that?”

“They were drunk as. They barely checked. Come on, let’s go before they find out!” She dangles a bag of credits in front of him, hops it jingling over his bare chest. He groans, and she throws her weight on him in a fierce hug, growl-giggling, before rolling him over and onto his feet. “Help me pack.”

A few minutes later they’re tip-toeing out to the speeder parked in the stripped wreckage that makes up half the buildings in this place. Not far away there’s a fire, cooking meat, a whole lot of larrikin yelling. 

He mounts up behind her and they’re off. She’s fierce and fearless, laughing, his shield against the world. 

  * \- -



There’s something different. He knows her too well. The way she breathes, the way her hands rest on her belly. He’s spent too long among Palpatine’s brood mares to miss the signs. It’s their first fight.

“How could you, how could you?” he shouts, flinging out his hand to encompass it all. Not the junk-built shelters huddled under the wreckage of old wars, not the blasted infinity of desert, but the slinking ruined people that live in the cracks, hands always on their weapons.

“What life could we give a child?” he screams, his voice breaking.

“Better than you had. Or I did. It’ll be _loved.”_

He takes their remaining credits and rides alone to Niima Outpost, where he goes on a bender that lasts for days. After that he’s in debt to Unkar Plutt. It’s months before he can work it off and return home.

She’s still there. Visibly pregnant now and possessed of a gravity he’s never seen before, both tied to the earth and weightless above it. She doesn’t say much when he returns. Just pats him gently all over as though to ease him back into this life which, evidently, they must share, for better or worse. 

“It’s going to be okay,” she says, with the enigmatic smile of a religious icon.

“You’re too thin. I can buy food.” And he does. It is better to break bread with one’s beloved. Even the strange dry bread of Jakku.

\-- --- --

He finds the baby beautiful beyond belief. Her smile cracks his heart. He would give her the sky. They both would. It’s all they have to give and she takes it, and all the wide open spaces, and makes them hers as she grows. They’ll never move the way she does, swift and certain as a desert animal. 

“It’ll be well,” his wife says sometimes, with only the ghost of the certainty she had when she was pregnant. “She’s free. What looks like a wilderness to us is her home, and she’s happy in it.”

“The people are vicious,” he says, too deep in alcohol to care how it makes her flinch.

“She’s smart. She learns so fast. I never have to remind her about the water, or the sandstorms.”

“But we can’t watch her all the time. I dream of her dead in a hole somewhere. Shot for a cup of water, or for nothing.”

He loves her too much, so he drinks. It’s the only way to cope.

One terrible day they both wake from a drunken blackout to find Rey gone. They storm through the local encampment, rousing the inhabitants to sullen fury, demanding to know who’s seen her, demanding help to search for her.

One of the villagers spits. “Why didn’ya watch her yourselves then?”

They find Rey sitting in a circle of soft furry creatures. He’s never seen one up close and doesn’t know what they’re called. Rey runs up to them, her face shining. “One was sick but I made it better!”

Later his wife murmurs into his chest, “That isn’t the first time. She does things, have you noticed?”

He sits up, furious, his throat on fire with sand and bile and fear. He’s been trying not to see it: Rey has what his father wanted. It’s skipped a generation. “She’s just a kid!”

“She says she can fly.”

“Liar!”

“The _Teedos_ say she can fly!”

“They’re liars too. But why weren’t you watching her?”

“Why weren’t you!”

And they’re off again, arguing about who should have stayed sober. By the time they think to lower their voices, Rey is out on the far dunes talking to the moons. Fearless.

“We can’t go on like this,” he says.

  * \- -



Rey comes skimming into their shelter on light feet. There’s a steelpecker flapping after her. 

“No no, don’t come in here, mum and dad won’t let you!” she cries. Then stops and holds up her arm for the steelpecker to land. It’s an absurd sight, the tiny girl braced for the weight of the bird. “He wanted to come in.”

“Where did you get that?” says his wife. 

“I fixed him. It’s not much different to how you fix a droid.” Another of Rey’s mysterious talents, and one they have talked about. It can earn her a living one day. She’ll be in demand among the salvage lords. 

  * \- -



Somebody’s talking, somebody’s seen too much. Not many ships come into Jakku but when one does, he recognises it. “That’s Ochi.”

“Who’s he?”

“He works for my father. He’s a Sith assassin. Or a wannabe, wears the robes, all that.”

“So they’ve found us!”

“Must have! Come on, we have to go.” His heart is in his throat, he can barely breathe. “Leave it, everything. Rey, we’re going on a trip. A little adventure.”

“I want to see the new ship.”

“Not friends. We have to go.” His eyes are scanning past the village’s water towers to where Ochi’s ship looms, clean and white as a new weapon.

Rey knows this life too well. In an instant the food is packed, the water, their bedrolls. Three of them on one skimmer and they peel out, away, a long streak across the desert. Into the maze of ruined ships and folded ravines.

But everywhere they go, Ochi’s been asking about him. 

  * \- -



When they get to Niima Outpost, it’s fair-time. New flags are flying and the bar is busy with workers who’ve finally paid off Unkar Plutt’s indenture. There’s even music.

“Just one drink,” says his wife.

“Or two,” he says, after they’ve had one. They can work for Plutt, they’ve done it before. Plutt’s already said he’s looking for a fresh crew. They’ll leave tomorrow, because the shifting sands have uncovered a star destroyer that’s never been stripped.

Rey wanders off, bored, and finds a shady spot near Plutt’s office. There’s a couple of old women sorting scrap, and she joins them. It’s a game for her. Her nimble fingers assemble some of the pieces. Plutt watches her from his countertop. 

“How much for the girl?” he asks, some time later.

“A million credits,” he replies, belligerent.

“Not even then!” adds his wife.

“Those little fingers of hers could come in useful. If you change your mind, the salvage crew’s leaving first thing,” says Plutt.

Then it’s morning and Rey is tugging on his arm. “Wake up, wake up, that ship is here. The one that isn’t friends!” The too-bright sun slices into his eyes, his brain. His wife groans beside him. They’re sprawled under a table in the bar tent. He can’t, he just can’t.

“Get the skimmer ready,” he tells Rey.

Unkar Plutt shambles over. “When were you going to pay, then?”

“What? No...”

Plutt waves a tab-pad at him. It shows a big number. If he didn’t already want to vomit he sure does now.

“We’ll work it off. Like last time.”

But not far away there’s an outcry, a scuffle. Ochi’s asking around town, looking for what belongs to the Sith.

“I’ve got to lead Ochi away from here,” he tells his wife. “I’ll go to him. I’ll think of something to get him off Jakku.”

“I can’t let you go,” says his wife. “I have to know what happens to you...”

“Stay. You have to look after Rey.”

“Nobody’s going anywhere ‘til you’ve paid me for what you drank last night,” says Unkar. He takes Rey’s hand. “Or you can let me take her.”

Rey starts to cry.

“It’s okay. Don’t cry.” He crouches down to her height. “Your mum and I, we’re just going on a short trip with that man. He wants to talk to us, that’s all. We’ll straighten things out with him, and then we’ll be back.”

“Come on!” says Unkar, and tugs on Rey’s arm.

“You work for Unkar, he’ll look after you until we get back.”

“Don’t go!” Her face is streaked with tears, she’s holding his hand with all her might. But he has to release her and hold his wife, who’s forcing her face steady somehow, with all the wordless ferocity of an animal in a trap. He focuses on that, on her courage, because to see Rey’s hands reaching for them is unbearable. 

The salvage crews’ engines are revving, impatient to go. 

Unkar Plutt waddles off, monstrously satisfied. Rey flails under his arm, screaming. 

Every tiny blow of her fists is breaking her father's heart.

“No tears, either of us,” whispers his wife. “When Ochi sees us, he can’t know she’s here.” If Rey lives, it’ll be because of this woman’s courage.

“He can’t know we have a child at all.”

It’s only seconds between Unkar leaving and Ochi bursting into the tent. He’s crazy, mad, shrivelled up by Palpatine’s will or the work he does. Worse, he knows about Rey. 

“Where’s the girl?”

“What girl?”

“You had a child! A girl! Palpatine knows!”

“We left her on Coruscant!”

“We couldn’t feed her,” screams his wife.

“We’ll show you. If she hasn’t been recycled.”

They load it onto Ochi, every drama and tragedy they’ve witnessed, and it only drives him madder. Ochi's so close to success, it's unbearable, with Palpatine breathing down his neck and sucking the life out of him with his merciless desires. They feed him all their failures and they become Ochi’s failures.

Ochi has to believe Rey’s here.

They have to convince him she isn’t.

But it’s too much, his head is stuffed with fear and fog, the filthy remains of Knockback Nectar take his tongue and he finally breaks. 

“Where is she?” yells Ochi for the hundredth time.

“We’ll never tell you,” he says, and his wife gasps at the admission. But Ochi’s not even listening. His blaster turns from a threat to a final word. 

His heart’s bursting right out of him, for real this time. What a horrible way to die. Blood everywhere, useless hateful Palpatine blood. But he’s still so proud.

He married the right woman, the street rat from Coruscant, who throws herself between them, and maybe it’s no use, but it’s not a pauper’s death either. Fierce as any warrior queen, its her blood and her courage Rey bears. Rey will survive.

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> \- - -
> 
> A thousand thanks to Christa, who betaed it brilliantly and quickly at short notice


End file.
